


the dawning of our lives

by saphinias



Category: American Idiot - Green Day/Armstrong
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 20:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10447296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saphinias/pseuds/saphinias
Summary: The truth is, he used to know her name like it was the only thing that mattered.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm finding it hard to get over the lyrics to Last of the American Girls and Whatsername seems like the coolest person alive, who happens to be involved with a self-obsessed loser - she's relatable and I love her.

The truth is, he used to know her name like it was the only thing that mattered.  Like it was the key to unlocking some great truth.  Like it meant more than his own.

Of course it meant more than his own.

It’s always there, on the tip of his tongue.  He never forgets her because that’s where she lives, right there on the tip of his tongue.  His whole life through, he remembers.

He doesn’t just remember the good stuff.  There wasn’t all that much good to remember, anyhow.  Just moments, flashes of memories when he surfaced from the haze he was drowning in.  Her, smearing her eyeliner just so.  Her, sitting on the fire escape with her legs swinging over the city.  Her, dancing in a diner in the first hours of the morning.  Her, smiling around a cigarette.  Her, her, her.

He doesn’t tell anyone about her.  Instead, he keeps her tucked away and does too many double-takes on the street.  It’s never her.  He’s half-convinced she wasn’t real.

Except, he can remember how it petrified him to meet her eyes.  The ache in his knees as he knelt before her.  The burn of her slap across his face.  How he washed up on the shore of his own mind after she left.

Washed up, she did that to him.  For him.  If nothing else, she saved him.  But that wasn’t it, wasn’t all.  She didn’t just send him back, she propelled him forward.  He remembers her, but in his mind she is mostly a revolving door, a trampoline, a dog-eared page.  He trusts that he loved her, even when he was drowning.  He lives his life with the assumption that he loved her, but for him she is just a semicolon.

She wore bright red lipstick, but he couldn’t tell you what color her eyes were.  Sweat gathered on her cupid’s bow sometimes, but he had no idea what she ever said to him.  He remembers the last time he saw her walking away, but he couldn’t recall meeting her.

The time she was in his life started like a sunrise.  He watched the horizon for the first hint of light and saw nothing, and then all at once his whole world was lit up with a naked sphere of power.  He couldn't remember the darkness that was draped around him just moments before. Don’t look straight at her, she'll make it hurt.

He looked straight at her.

 


End file.
